Justice Sandra Day O'Connor Introduces iCivics

Spearheaded by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, iCivics is a web-based education project designed to reinvigorate civic teaching and learning. iCivics.org features free games, lesson plans, web quests, and interactive modules. Visit iCivics.org today!

Click Here to Go to the iCivics.org Web site

• Students can earn points for their class by playing iCivics games. The class with the most points will win the Grand Prize: a virtual visit from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

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• Do you want to make your community a better place to live? In Counties Work, you decide about the programs and services that affect everyone!

• Do you like to control your own money? InPeople’s Pie, you control the budget of the federal government!

• Ever wanted to be President for a day? InExecutive Command, you can be President for four years!

• In Do I Have A Right?, you’ll run your own firm of lawyers who specialize in constitutional law.

Check out games and activities on the topic of your choice!

Learn about what's new at iCivics

Schools that receive federal funding are required to "hold an educational program pertaining to the United States Constitution". Meet your Constitution Day teaching requirement with fun, engaging, and easy-to-use games and lesson plans from iCivics:

Play a game!

In Do I Have a Right?, students run their own law firm and help clients resolve funny yet thought-provoking issues. They'll learn about the Bill of Rights and other amendments to the Constitution. Check out our Game Guide for Teachers to learn how to use this game in your classroom.

Teach our lesson plan!

This free Constitution Day lesson plan provides a great overview of the Constitution and how Articles I-III describe the structure, function and powers of our three branches of government.

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: Spreading the Gospel of Bill+Eli throughout the land: LESSONS FROM L.A.

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: Spreading the Gospel of Bill+Eli throughout the land: LESSONS FROM L.A.:

Spreading the Gospel of Bill+Eli throughout the land: LESSONS FROM L.A.

BY KEVEN ANN WILLEY, VICE PRESIDENT AND EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR -THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS |HTTP://DALLASNE.WS/RROWOK

12:20 PM on Tue., Sep. 27, 2011 | We had an interesting Editorial Board meeting this morning with the president of the Los Angeles Unified School District board and the district's new superintendent. (Well, semi-new. He's been there about a year.) They are in town for a conference sponsored by the Dallas Chamber later today to talk about education reform. What an inspirational confab we had!

I would like to pluck President Monica Garcia and/or John Deasy and transplant them to Dallas. They both exude positive energy, plus an aura of order, accountability and a real inner core dedicated to change.

Our very own Bill McKenzie has written a good bit on our blogs and on our newspaper Editorial and op-ed pages about some of the successes in LA. For me, meeting these people and conversing with them about their challenges, ideas and vision really drove home many of the points Bill

What Is the Sound of One Hand Clapping? | Dissident Voice

What Is the Sound of One Hand Clapping? | Dissident Voice:

What Is the Sound of One Hand Clapping?

by E.R. Bills

I received an urgent transmission from my children’s school the other day. President Obama was scheduled to address the impressionable young minds of our kids at 12:30 pm on September 28 and my children’s middle school wanted to offer parents “the opportunity to opt their children out of viewing the Presidential speech.”

The school was going to make the Presidential speech available to students, but allow the partisan and/or bigoted parental crowd to shield their probably already-sheltered offspring from anything threatening the pale (as in white, conservative and “good”) worldview that they themselves espouse and do everything in their power to instill in their children.

The image of former President George W. Bush (looking dazed and meek) sitting in a classroom full of kids while the terrorists attacked on 9/11, came to mind. Had that school contacted all their pupils’ parents to make sure it

Beyond Bologna

by Linh Dinh

At the Wall Street protest, a young woman carried a sign, “REVOLUTION IS FUN,” and I don’t doubt that she was having a great time, because it can be exhilarating to engage in a just and noble fight, and to feel that you are an agent of change, a participant in history even, and not just one of its faceless victims, as is the common lot. So fun, yes, at least for her, and at least up to that moment, until the violence explodes, as nearly always happens in anything approaching a political revolution.

The violence of September 24th, the 8th day of the anti-Wall Street Protest, appears to not have caused severe or permanent injuries, though it was brutal enough, and some outrage has even flared in the mainstream media. Anthony Bologna, a 28-year-veteran of the New York Police Department, has emerged as a clear cut villain. Without provocation, he pepper sprayed two young women in the faces, and for this he should certainly be fired, then locked up, but this commotion has overshadowed, at least momentarily, the real target and meaning of this protest. Though police brutality is never to be taken lightly, Occupy Wall Street is aiming to expose and hold to

Grumpy Educators: 20 Things Students Want the Nation to Know About Education

Grumpy Educators: 20 Things Students Want the Nation to Know About Education:

20 Things Students Want the Nation to Know About Education

NBC sponsored Education Nation is billed as a national summit on education. Panel after panel discussed and debated a wide variety of topics. Perhaps I am one more in the pool of parents, community members, or taxpayers who never heard of it. Could it be this important pool remains at the fringes of the national discussion?

Thanks to Lisa of the Innovative Educator blog, I learned that there was at least a student panel. This insightful blog is reposted below.

20 Things Students Want the Nation to Know About Education

It's rare for education reformers, policymakers, and funders to listen to those at the heart of education reform work: The students. In fact Ann Curry who hosted

Third Way’s “Revisionist Analysis” [Bold-faced lie!] « School Finance 101

Third Way’s “Revisionist Analysis” [Bold-faced lie!] « School Finance 101:

Third Way’s “Revisionist Analysis” [Bold-faced lie!]

by schoolfinance101

I know I said I’d stop addressing the Third Way report on Middle Class Schools, but I do have one more thing to point out. Third Way issued a memo in which it aggressively attacked my assertion that they had used district level data to characterize middle class schools. Again, this assertion was relevant to showing the absurdity of their classification scheme, but there were numerous other problems with the report.

My NEPC Review

My NEPC Response to Third Way Memo regarding Methods

Third way claims my analyses to be “fatally flawed” because, as they claim in their follow-up memo, their analyses were actually at the school level and did not, as I show in tables in my review, contain all schools in poor cities including Detroit, Philadelphia or Chicago. Allow me to point out that what I actually said in my review

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The Toll of the Great Recession

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The Toll of the Great Recession:

The Toll of the Great Recession

The Pew Hispanic Center reports that more Latino children are living in poverty—6.1 million in 2010—than children of any other racial or ethnic group. This marks the first time in U.S. history that the single largest group of poor

Public Policy Blogger: The data: Poverty, health, children and soldiers

Public Policy Blogger: The data: Poverty, health, children and soldiers:

The data: Poverty, health, children and soldiers

by Anne Geiger

(Sources: Pew Hispanic Center, The Washington Post, National Poverty Center, Childstats. gov, Kaiser Family Foundation, American Dental Association, Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America)

Children living in poverty:

6.1 million Hispanic children
5 million black children
4.4 million non-Hispanic white children

15.5 million of America's 74.2 million children now live in poverty

35% of all Hispanic children
39% of all

Where to Find Scholarships for Single Moms - The Scholarship Coach (usnews.com)

Where to Find Scholarships for Single Moms - The Scholarship Coach (usnews.com):

Where to Find Scholarships for Single Moms

By SCHOLARSHIP AMERICA

September 29, 2011 RSS Feed Print

While it was once rare to see women in college classrooms, these days there are more women than ever enrolled in higher education. In fact, there are currently more women enrolled than their male counterparts. With the female student population growing, so is the number of "nontraditional" students. Single mothers are among those in this category. Scholarship providers are creating more financial aid opportunities tailored to fit female students in special circumstances. Here are just a few:

If you had to put your higher education on hold due to raising a family, the Jeanette Rankin Women's Scholarship Fund offers a scholarship for women over the age of 35, pursuing a technical

Sending out an SOS. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Sending out an SOS. « Fred Klonsky's blog:

Sending out an SOS.

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

by Fred Klonsky

Monday’s Park Ridge board of education meeting was fascinating.

Let me set the scene.

The board was going to adopt the proposed budget. Because Park Ridge is a moderately affluent community, and because we won a tax referendum several years ago, the district has been buffered by the impact of the economic crisis that other public school districts, particularly urban and downstate districts, are experiencing.

With an annual budget of $70 million, the district is running with savings of 30% over expenses.

Since Illinois funds it’s public schools on a crazy system based primarily on local property taxes,

Save Seattle Schools Community Blog: Candidate Forum at Town Hall

Save Seattle Schools Community Blog: Candidate Forum at Town Hall:

Candidate Forum at Town Hall

by Charlie Mas

I was at the Stranger's School Board Candidate Forum at Town Hall last night. It was very interesting and I would encourage everyone to look for it on the Seattle Channel.

The festivities began with a quick answer round. The MC, Dave Ross, asked a number of questions and candidates would take a position on the stage behind signs that said "Yes", "No", or "Dunno". The questions were pretty good and they caused some folks to struggle with their answers. A number of the answers - particularly from the incumbents - were VERY surprising. When asked if they wanted to change the math curriculum, all of the incumbents clustered at the "Yes" sign. They also clustered at the "Yes" sign when asked if language immersion schools should be option schools. I was not the only person in the audience who wondered why their voting records didn't reflect the positions they were taking on the Town Hall stage. There were some times when the incumbents were clustered at one sign and the challengers at another. There were some times when nearly everyone was together. There were a couple questions with only one or two candidates

Schools Matter: John Merrow to America's Teachers: Trust Vulture Philanthropy

Schools Matter: John Merrow to America's Teachers: Trust Vulture Philanthropy:

John Merrow to America's Teachers: Trust Vulture Philanthropy

by Jim Horn

John Merrow will reliably parrot any corporate education scheme whose promoters will give him a spot on the stage from which to do so in a way that makes whatever fool notion he is being paid to hawk seem like his own. From a recent self-promoting ad that introduces one of his info-tisement post at HuffPo:

Two quick notes before we blog: I'll be appearing live in conversation with Dave Levin of KIPP and Eva Moskowitz of Harlem Success Academy. This event, a discussion about the charter movement, will take place on Wednesday, Sept. 21 in NYC. If you can make it, we'd love to see you there. Tickets are going fast -- so get yours here.

And as always, remember that my February 2011 book The Influence of Teachers is for sale at Amazon.

The post goes on to promote a new educators' "faith" in technology in order to solve the cheating problem that,

Forward to the Past - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Forward to the Past - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

Forward to the Past

by Deborah Meier

Dear Diane,

You're everywhere! Meanwhile, my big adventure this week was going to Boston. But it's always good to go and see friends and visit Mission Hill. What a wonderful place for 5- to 14-year-olds.

A math specialist who reads our blog (Margery Palmer) sent me interesting data on international comparisons re. math. She notes that many educators think they need two hours of preparation and review for every hour they teach. Maybe so. She noted that in the 15 nations in the Second International Mathematics Study, we ranked right in the middle in 8th and 12th grade. Only one of those that ranked above us had teachers who taught 25 hours or more a week. The others were 16 and 20. Interesting. Imagine 16 hours of class time and 16 hours of professional time. Hmmmm.

I had a singing teacher once who told me that when I thought I "almost had it" was the time to take a rest and

Shanker Blog » For Many Teachers, Reform Means Higher Risk, Lower Rewards

Shanker Blog » For Many Teachers, Reform Means Higher Risk, Lower Rewards:

For Many Teachers, Reform Means Higher Risk, Lower Rewards

by Matthew Di Carlo

One of the central policy ideas of market-based education reform is to increase both the risk and rewards of the teaching profession. The basic idea is to offer teachers additional compensation (increased rewards), but, in exchange, make employment and pay more contingent upon performance by implementing merit pay and weakening job protections such as tenure (increased risk). This trade-off, according to advocates, will not only force out low performers by paying them less and making them easier to fire, but it will also attract a “different type” of candidate to teaching – high-achievers who thrive in a high-stakes, high-reward system.

As I’ve said before, I’m skeptical as to whether less risk-averse individuals necessarily make better teachers, as I haven’t seen any evidence that this is the case. I’m also not convinced that personnel policies are necessarily the most effective lever when it comes to “attracting talent,” and I’m concerned that the sheer size of the teaching profession makes doing so a unique challenge. That said, I’m certainly receptive to trying new

Seth's Blog: The forever recession (and the coming revolution)

Seth's Blog: The forever recession (and the coming revolution):

The forever recession (and the coming revolution)

There are actually two recessions:

The first is the cyclical one, the one that inevitably comes and then inevitably goes. There's plenty of evidence that intervention can shorten it, and also indications that overdoing a response to it is a waste or even harmful.

The other recession, though, the one with the loss of "good factory jobs" and systemic unemployment--I fear that this recession is here forever.

Why do we believe that jobs where we are paid really good money to do work that can be systemized, written in a manual and/or exported are going to come back ever? The internet has squeezed inefficiencies out of many systems, and the ability to move work around, coordinate activity and digitize data all combine to eliminate a wide swath of the jobs the industrial age created.

There's a race to the bottom, one where communities fight to suspend labor and environmental rules in order to become the world's cheapest supplier. The